


drown your sadness in the bayou

by ephemeralstar



Series: horses running until they forget that they are horses [3]
Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Miscarriage, Painfully Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-05
Updated: 2019-12-05
Packaged: 2021-02-18 03:30:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21671116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ephemeralstar/pseuds/ephemeralstar
Summary: “Why,” there were tears in her eyes now, voice thick as she tried not to let them spill, “why did you three get to survive?”
Relationships: Arthur Morgan & Original Female Character(s), Sean MacGuire/Original Female Character(s)
Series: horses running until they forget that they are horses [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1543420
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	drown your sadness in the bayou

**Author's Note:**

> I just finished Chapter 3 of rdr2 and I'm sad.

The minute Micah returns from town, from that ill-fated mission, McCullough knows something’s wrong. He was leading Ennis back into camp without the horse’s rider, and neither Arthur nor Bill was anywhere to be seen; Bill had been tasked with burying Sean some place nice, but Arthur couldn’t stand to be around Micah at the moment, and had taken a brief leave of the camp.

“Where is everyone?” Dutch’s voice rang out through camp, and it brought McCullough out of where she was focused on carefully measuring black powder. The first thing she noted was the grim expression Micah wore, and the second was Ennis. He was still wearing his saddle, but he had a wild look in his eyes, like he was getting ready to bolt at any second. Wiping off the dust and powder from her fingers, she listens to the others talk as she approaches the horse. It’s like he recognises her, whickering as she gets close, skittish when she goes to pet him. Something had gone  _ so terribly wrong. _

Micah recounts how it had been an ambush, how Sean had been lost before they even knew what was going on, and it’s like McCullough’s blood turns to ice. 

He’d been shot in the head.

Sean had been  _ shot  _ in the  _ head _ . 

“Where is he now?” She asks, voice sharp, unwavering, it’s a demand. Bill has it, she’s told, and so she’s quick to ask  _ where  _ he is then. Micah shrugs, a dark disappointment sitting heavy in his shoulders. 

Everything sounds like white noise, like waves crashing and wind howling. McCullough drops to the ground, shock holding her muscles hostage, and she can’t even cry. 

Arthur had a bad feeling about it, apparently, and McCullough thinks he should have gone with his gut; Arthur was like a bloodhound with a nose for trouble, could smell it a mile away and yet always seemed to be wrapped up in it. Sean was just a fool, too young to know any better. And McCullough too, too young to have gone through as much as she had. 

For many days and many nights she is stagnant, drinking moonshine and grieving, taking Miss Grimshaw’s verbal abuse, but not seeming to process any of it. 

Bill comes back, Bill who’d orchestrated the whole endeavour, having taken time to bury Sean and recover on his own, but he’s accosted the moment he steps into camp.

“Where’s my man?” McCullough demands from Bill, and it’s with an overwhelming sadness that he tells her where Sean’s buried. Before she leaves, she pauses, tears in her eyes. "Fuck you, Bill; grow a fucking brain."

Overwhelmed in her grief is how Arthur finds her, a mess and silent, her back against the headstone as she overlooks the field adjacent to the nameless grave of her former love.

“Miss Mad Dog?” 

“You knew it would be trouble; you knew it wasn’t right.” It’s not that she blamed Arthur, persay, more than anything she blamed Bill, for roping Sean into it, and the Grays, for pulling the trigger. She hasn’t had the energy for vengeance, her heart too heavy, her thoughts too sad. “ _ You knew  _ it was a setup,  _ somehow _ .” Seething, she refused to look at Arthur as he rested a hand atop her head.

“Adelaide?” 

“Why,” there were tears in her eyes now, voice thick as she tried not to let them spill, “ _ why  _ did you three get to survive?” She couldn’t help it now, sobbing, loud and tragic in the middle of the afternoon, and Arthur sat beside her, his arm around her shoulders in a gesture of reassurance. “Why do  _ I  _ get to survive?” 

They stay like that for a long while, McCullough’s weeping echoing through the field and down the road. The sound sits heavy in Arthur's bones. When they get back to camp, everyone’s up in arms and frantic; Jack has gone missing, has been taken, and the blame lays with the Braithwaites. McCullough knows with the size of the troupe Dutch has assembled that it won’t do her any good to go with them, they’ve already got all the firearms they need. Instead, she a spark light up in her soul, and though she feels Sean’s absence like a hole in her soul, the feeling fuels her. 

Every single explosive she has available goes into her horse’s saddle, and Nursey stood diligently as McCullough frantically packed her saddle bags with dynamite. 

The Grays’ house looms ominous and quiet as McCullough alone approaches at night. Inside, someone is mourning, quietly and angrily sniffling and muttering, and what few Grays were left after the skirmish in town as keeping vigil around the house. 

McCullough, in her wrought iron wolf mask slips silently around the grounds; dynamite planted by the foundations of the house, in the barns, all over the property, more than any one person should rightfully have access to, enough to leave the entire property a smouldering crater. The stick she lights is the catalyst to a chain reaction, standing with Nursey only a few hundred feet from the property. It’s like poetry to her, explosions make their own kind of sense, their own kind of music, and she can sing along in key every time. There’s fires and screaming and explosions ringing out through the night air, and soon smoke is rising a few miles away from what she can only assume is the aftermath of whatever happened at the Braithwaite property.

_ Good _ .

It’s only as she leaves that she realise she may have been too close, delighting too much in her own vengeance; the ringing in her ears refuses to go away, and the sound of Nursey’s gallop sounds so distant compared to it’s usual thundering beat. 

Days go by and the ringing gets louder, and McCullough's existence seems to grow softer. She doesn't speak anymore, to unnerved that she can barely hear herself, to try.

It's worse than when Sean was missing after Blackwater; then she'd had hope, filled the silence as a temporary measure, keeping the status quo while he was away. Now… nothing.

The rest of the camp hadn't realised she had been pregnant until she'd miscarried, her stress and grief wracked body robbing her of all she had left to hope for. The way she cries that night, held tight by Abigail and Arthur, it's the loudest any of them has heard her in a while, the sound ringing out through the hushed camp at Shady Belle. 

She doesn't experiment like she used to, just makes enough to keep the camp stocked. Dutch doesn't send her out, doesn't expect anything from her, no-one does anymore. Deaf and silent and perpetually equal parts drunk, grieving and angry, she lives a quiet, bitter life. Quiet enough that they stop worrying about her, stop paying attention all together. Arthur's the first to notice; no note, no notice, he can't actually remember the last time he saw her, but she and Nursey are nowhere to be found. 

Dutch says to let her be; if she'd have wanted to be found, she'd have left a note. He doesn't sound happy when he says it, but they both know McCullough well enough, practically family. 

_ "Why do I get to survive?"  _

Arthur can't get her words out of his head, and if he dwells too long on it, he's fairly certain she didn't; she'd become a ghost long before she'd disappeared.


End file.
